


All We Do

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Let Them Eat Flesh [7]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, Cannibalism, M/M, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:48:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Frank is selfish.





	All We Do

When Frank had first learned that Bill might not wake up after he’d finished with him, and that if he did he might no longer be capable of remembering who or where he was, much less why, Frank had wondered for a moment if he hadn’t lost his temper a bit there. Gone overboard. Taken that beating a little too far, as it were.

He wasn’t guilty, hearing Bill’s prognosis; he was disappointed. You couldn’t learn much of a lesson from the Land of Persistent Vegetables. 

Laying in the spare room at the Lieberman’s -- it was once David’s office, but after something that almost turned into an actual fight, including David near tears and Sarah going red-faced in exasperation when Frank resisted the initial offer, Frank had finally agreed to paying a small rent in exchange for the room becoming a bedroom at least until he could afford to get a place of his own -- he’s thinking maybe he should have just killed the asshole after all.

David, curled around behind Frank and holding his phone so they can both read the news article that had just gone live on the Bulletin’s website, would likely agree if Frank were to voice that thought. 

The article, describing Bill as a ‘victim of The Punisher’s’ reported that the man had not only woken up but promptly attempted to escape his hospital room, killing a nurse in the process. He’d been subdued and there was a good deal of noise being made about transferring him from the hospital to a cell to await trial. The argument was that his condition was still delicate enough that if taken from the hospital he could succumb suddenly to complications. The article even tried to argue that Russo’s attempt to flee the hospital was fear-motivated, not guilt; that he was waking from a coma induced after taking such a severe beating it could still kill him and had in the haze of waking reacted assuming he was still under attack.

“Get that shit outta my face,” Frank finally grunts, closing his eyes to the phone as David starts scrolling through the comments on the article. It hadn’t mentioned once that Bill had nearly killed a federal agent -- that he’d killed several before that night. Reading that dreck, the average idiot would come away thinking Bill was some ex-Marine turned entrepreneurial businessman who had somehow run afoul of the bad ol’ Punisher. 

After all, they wouldn’t want to say anything that would create a bias against Russo before he had his fair trial. 

David huffed an agonized noise, rolling onto his back, one arm still pinned under Frank. Frank almost snapped something about the loss of warmth, but David quickly returned, phone set aside for now. “That’s such fucking bullshit. They made that murdering piece of shit out to be some kind of sympathetic character you beat up for no reason.”

Frank doesn’t want to talk about this. The nausea coiling in his gut is some nasty combination of rage and anxiety and he wants to do something, anything other than consider why he should be feeling something a whole lot like fear scouring through him at the thought of Bill being awake and having already made one bid for escape. “Life ain’t fair,” he grumbles, hoping to encourage David to just drop it because that kind of bland truth leaves no room for arguing. 

Holding tight to Frank, David presses his face against the curve of Frank’s shoulder. In the months that have passed since that last day together in the powerstation, Frank’s wounds have finally mended. It’s one of the reasons Frank was still staying here, unable to leave David and Sarah worry about him taking care of himself when he was littered with slow-healing open wounds. 

One of the biggest concerns among infected people was the slowing of the healing process. The mutation did seem to reduce the likeliness of other kinds of infections -- gangrene was rare, which puzzled medical professionals. The tissue remained oxygenated and healthy, but the repairing of torn or broken flesh was drastically slowed. As Frank had found, his collection of various cuts, abrasions, bruises, and breaks only just finally seeming to have fully closed. 

The scars where David had twice harvested flesh from Frank’s back were weirdly livid against Frank’s now pallid skin. All his scars stood out sharply, but those two, when he twisted to look in the mirror, immediately leapt at him, drawing his eye. Maybe it was just because he knew who had made them, and why. 

Now David nuzzles at the scar on his left shoulder, gently, thoughtfully, like he’s trying to soothe. Maybe he is, or maybe he’s self-soothing; God knows David takes comfort in physicality. Frank sighs, and David mutters against his skin.

“If he tried to run, he definitely remembers what happened, right?” He says, and Frank has to fight not to let his hands curl into fists. As it is, he can’t keep his body from tensing up, irritation lancing through him because doesn’t. Want. To think. About. That. “I mean, it’s just, if he remembers some he probably remembers all, and he knows --”

Twisting around in the bed, the movement rough enough that he hears David hiss a sharp, pained breath at Frank’s weight digging into his arm, Frank rolls to face David, cutting his ramble off with a kiss. It seems impulsive, and in a way it is -- it’s the first thing Frank can think to do that will guarantee David shutting up. Certainly David, who’s been gaming for this kind of exchange for… well, for a while; certainly he wanted it. He’d wanted to pick right up where they’d left off in that damn basement once they’d settled into a routine here.

Maybe Frank’s a coward for not facing the issue at hand. For shoving the tangled mess of emotion away in favor of something physical, something he can clutch onto and  _ do _ something about, rather than just agonize over. Maybe he’s an asshole for having withheld anything like this from David for months now, barely able to resist but knowing it had to be the right thing to do because David still had his family. 

Frank had nobody to lose but David and his family. Surely doing anything with David in this bed but sleeping -- actual, eyes-closed deep-breathing unconscious  _ sleeping _ \-- would drive a wedge in and ruin things for David in the process too. Frank couldn’t stand the idea of causing any strife between David and Sarah. 

David closes his hands hard against Frank’s back, pressing so tight Frank can feel each ragged nail-edge press through his shirt. David’s mouth is cool against his, because even like this he still manages to run warmer that the analyst. It feels good, giving in to this, taking it in hand and claiming it. They’re in this together, aren’t they? If they’d needed each other before, how was it any kind of fair to pretend they didn’t now?

It’s been months, laying agonizingly close, sleeping in platonic tangles, eating together, touching, always touching, because David couldn’t help it and Frank trusted himself with no one else. It’s built in him, the desire, the need, like pressure behind a pinched hose, a steady ache. David’s soft, brittle groan tells him it’s been no better for him, and why should it have been? David had always needed this in a more real way than Frank; needed the warmth, needed the control, needed it. Frank had just been greedy, as he is being greedy now.

Greedy and selfish, because this feels good and he’ll do anything to avoid thinking too much about what he should have done, who he should have just killed. For David’s sake, for all their sakes; what lesson did he really hope to teach anyway? Dead men were no teachers, and he really was that now, deader than he’d ever been. Truth was he’d been selfish then, too, refusing to just put a bullet in Bill’s head and have done with it.

But he doesn’t want to think of that, and David’s kissing him like it means something, and if he’s going to be selfish, then why not now too? He doesn’t want to think, he just wants to chase the quickening of David’s pulse, feel the blood thunder under his fingers, under his teeth. He wants to find something here at rock bottom, he wants to stop feeling like he’s digging that hole deeper every day.

David pulls away and it’s all he can do not to snap at him. The hands digging into his back relax, and David sighs softly. “We really need to talk, Frank.”

“I don’t want to  _ talk _ .”

The words leave him, rough and growling and all to childish, before he can censor himself. He knows David thinks too much, reads too much into everything to miss the logical realization that Frank, who had refused to so much as hold David’s hand in months, had kissed him now just to try and hold off a conversation he didn’t want to have. He’d forgotten what shame felt like, piled on when you fucked up that way.

Something like hurt clouds David’s expression for a moment, and then it’s replaced by something harder, angrier. David is hardly the most intimidating man Frank’s ever disappointed or pissed off, but he’s possibly -- probably -- the only man Frank’s ever cared about not disappointing in this particular way. He liked David’s trust, his willingness to be open with Frank about his wants even when Frank couldn’t possibly understand  _ why _ he wanted the things he wanted. David was, after all, willing to want him, and there was no cause for that, especially not any more. 

David has someone safe to keep him warm, David has a living, healthy family. David has stability; a job, a home, a cleared name -- things that could only become endangered through continued contact with Frank. 

When David pulls away and slides out of the bed, Frank feels his heart twist in his chest the way it always has when he failed something important, when he really fucked up. It might beat slower now, but in that sick expression of hurt, nothing’s changed.

“David,” he tries, but it’s quiet; there’s no point. He’s not going to talk about what David wants to talk about, even if he comes back, and David’s smart enough to know that.

But David pauses in the doorway of the room -- it feels so cold, even with the blankets still piled on him -- and rests his hand on the doorjamb. “You don’t get to turn it on and off like a fucking faucet, Frank,” David finally says, and there’s something in that tone that’s both hard and brittle. “You either want it or you don’t. And it’s sure as hell not going to be something you use to block out shit you’re uncomfortable dealing with.”

There’re a lot of things Frank could say to that; defensive things, biting things, ugly, cruel, unkind things. Sometimes, though, it’s best to keep your mouth shut, Frank has learned. 

Especially when the other party has you dead to rights.

David leaves and the bed goes cold. Even with the electric blanket on, it feels cold, the space too big, the room too quiet. Frank knows it’s better to talk now, to go to David and apologize, try to make it right, before either of them can justify putting it behind them and moving on, building the future of their relationship on such ugly roots. 

Knowing, though, doesn’t make it any easier. Frank falls asleep in the wintery cool of the afternoon sun, words he needs to say dying in his throat, buried in the soft soil of his dreams. 

David would understand.


End file.
